HE INDUSTRY--ITS PART IN POLITICS AND DIPLOMACY--THE FISHING BANKS--TYPES
OF BOATS--GROWTH OF THE FISHING COMMUNITIES--FARMERS AND SAILORS BY
TURNS--THE EDUCATION OF THE FISHERMEN--METHODS OF TAKING MACKEREL--THE
SEINE AND THE TRAWL--SCANT PROFITS OF THE INDUSTRY--PERILS OF THE
BANKS--SOME PERSONAL EXPERIENCES--THE FOG AND THE FAST LINERS--THE TRIBUTE
OF HUMAN LIFE.

The summer yachtsman whiling away an idle month in cruises up and down
that New England coast which, once stern and rock-bound, has come to be
the smiling home of midsummer pleasures, encounters at each little port
into which he may run, moldering and decrepit wharves, crowned with
weatherbeaten and leaky structures, waterside streets lined with shingled
fish-houses in an advanced stage of decay, and acres of those low
platforms known as flakes, on which at an earlier day the product of the
New England fisheries was spread out to dry in the sun, but which now are
rapidly disintegrating and mingling again with the soil from which the
wood of their structures sprung. Every harbor on the New England coast,
from New Bedford around to the Canadian line, bears these dumb memorials
to the gradual decadence of what was once our foremost national industry.
For the fisheries which once nursed for us a school of the hardiest
seamen, which aroused the jealousy of England and France, which built up
our seaport towns, and carried our flag to the furthest corners of the
globe, and which in the records both of diplomacy and war fill a prominent
place have been for the last twenty years appreciably tending to
disappear. Many causes are assigned for this. The growing scarcity of
certain kinds of fish, the repeal of encouraging legislation, a change in
the taste of certain peoples to whom we shipped large quantities of the
finny game, the competition of Canadians and Frenchmen, the great
development of the salmon fisheries and salmon canning on the Pacific
coast, all have contributed to this decay. It is proper, however, to note
that the decadence of the fisheries is to some extent more apparent than
real. True, there are fewer towns supported by this industry, fewer boats
and men engaged in it; but in part this is due to the fact that the steam
fishing boat carrying a large fleet of dories accomplishes in one season
with fewer hands eight or ten times the work that the old-fashioned pink
or schooner did. And, moreover, as the population of the seaport towns has
grown, the a